strategy for Quant solicited.

[sachin.w]

Hello,
Request your guidance in understanding where I stand and what I should do now:


2 Months ago , just went thru the basic formulas and solve simple questions, and took a mock . i got a 39 in Quant.

A month later I took 2nd mock after going thru basics of some strategy guides, and I got 44.

Since then, I have solved soem extremely tough gmat prep questions in inequalities/mods/stats/number properties/general algebra

I am able to understand almost all the solutions to the tough gmat prep Quant questions but I don't by myself get that way of thinking to solve the quant prob initially.

Today I took the Quant diagonostic here in this site and I scored 20/20 avg time spent 1.16 mins approximately.

I found that I could solve many of those questions only because those concepts were covered in extremely tough questions that I had solved/analysed to death(in stacy's words) over the last 3 weeks.

Stacy also mentioned in one of her articles that at a very high level , CAT would have known that we are good in basics/foundations and tests if we are able to analyse/recognize the patters in numbers, etc.
and so she suggested to take very tough problems , analyse them to the core and then this intuition or insight of recognizing these things that GMAT tests will automatically come with practice.

My dilemma is whether I should continue solving very tough questions by analysing them to death or
should I solve all the excercise questions in Manhattan strategy guides. I am sure solving these would take a lot of time.

With a score of 44 in my latest mock which was without any effective preparation and without much experience on OG problems, do you think I am weak in Quant and solving Manhattan strategy books excercises will help? or shall I just keep on practising the tough questions by looking at the soln and the content in strategy guides if I am unable to solve it and analysing it to death?



Please guide me.

Regards,
Sach

[StaceyKoprince]

Don't only analyze tough questions - I've actually never said that you should do this only on tough questions, and I specifically say that you should be doing this on ALL questions and NOT neglecting the easy or medium ones. There are still a LOT of things to learn on questions at or below your current level!

44Q is 63rd percentile, so you definitely should not only be doing hard questions. You're missing a lot of medium questions. Even if you're missing them due to timing issues or stamina issues, those are still things you need to work on and you can't hope to get better by doing only tough ones.

There's also a good chance that there are some holes in your foundation (simply because nearly everyone has holes in their foundation). If you haven't already been through all of the material in the strategy guides, that's one place to start. You don't need to do every last problem set problem, but you need to do enough to gauge whether you're okay with those things or whether you need to do more. This isn't about DOING everything that you can possibly do. It's about doing enough that you can answer the question, "What are my specific strengths and weaknesses in this area (for this question type, for this knowledge area, etc) and what can I do to get better at these specific weaknesses?"

What you actually do will differ greatly depending upon what the specific issues are - the fundamental concepts, the skills to solve, timing, etc.

Read both parts of this series:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... an-part-1/

And you may also find some useful stuff here:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

[sachin.w]

Thanks a lot, Stacey for your advice.
Takeaway would be to do enough to know atleast my weaknesses and strengths which would help me develop a strong strategy towards the last leg of the race.

[StaceyKoprince]

Definitely - if you don't know what your strengths are vs. your weaknesses, then you can't make good decisions about what and how to study, nor can you make good decisions about how to spend your time during an actual test. :)

And the other big takeaway is WHY something is a weakness. There are a lot of different ways in which we can mess something up - the WHY tells us what we need to practice or study in order to get better.